IO15 Keynote
Setting the Stage - IO15 Keynote
We walked into a room with a wraparound display around three-quarters of the large room on the third floor of Moscone, that was showing a slick looking wallpaper with floating graphs, and ones and zeros. The wallpaper animation was interrupted for a few games of pong played from end to end on what must be a five hundred foot long display. From there, we saw a Rube Goldburg running on the screen, where they took advantage of the fact that it had been filmed, and took sections in slow motion. The music was building up to what we assumed would be a massive payoff, but then near the end, the screen filled with water, and a giant whale swam across the screen. More pong, and floating ones and zeros, and waiting for things to get started. The Pong finals ended in a tie. Now we’re flying through the galaxy, floating past asteroids that appear to be way too close together. Earth shows up and fades out to applause, then we are transitioned into a countdown that starts from 60, counts down to 7, at which point we see a reddit alien and twitter birds, uber cars in an animation that looks like it belongs as the intro to Silicon Valley. This part of the animation features a red dot in the starring role. I wonder how much 7-up paid for this promotional spot? The red dot fixes the countdown and then fireworks.
9:41am - Start Time
Sundar walks onto stage. He’s trying to weave a consistent story around all of Google’s core technologies. I’m not sure how true it is, but it makes for a nice story.
Quick rundown of platforms that we’ll be touching on:
- Android
- Android Wear
- Android Auto
- Android TV
- Chromecast
- Android M Developer Preview
HBO Now announced for Google Play, Silicon Valley gets a mention! Yay!
Android M Developer Preview
9:49am
App Permissions
Customize and control, app permissions. App permssions changing to the iOS paradigm, WhatsApp used. No permissions up front, first time use, microphone permissions comes up. Permissions may be revoked. Only applies to apps targeted at M. No auto-update blocking on new permissions. This is huge.
Mobile Web
Providing content in WebViews kind of sucks. Chrome Custom Tabs are the solution. Chrome browser running with branded UI features when linked from an app, creates a seamless experience. Pre-fetching content. Leverage all of Chrome’s goodies. Q3.
App Links
Verify that the app owns the links that it claims. No more disambiguation dialog, because the platform can verify those links.
Mobile Payments
Android Pay, what about Wallet? Works with any Android device with NFC. Works at any retailers that accept touchless payments (does that mean all Apple Pay providers?). Also in-app.
- Simplicity
- Security
- Choice
KitKat forward.
Fingerprint Support
Built-in fingerprint support in Android M with a standard API. Works with Android Pay. Can be used to unlock, or do in-app purchases. Open APIs. Nexus 6 support???
Power & Charging
Smarter power management with Doze. Uses motion detection to exponentially back-off network activity to extend battery life on devices that are lightly used, or left on the table for most of th day. Still allows high-priority chat messages through. Up to 2x battery life on Nexus 9.
3-5x faster charging with USB C, which sounds like it’s going to be the new standard. Working with OEMs.
Word Selection
Word chunking in selection.
Easier sharing
Direct share, remembers who/what you share with most frequently to surface intelligently.
Simplified Volume Controls
All audio streams available from one thing.
M image
10:06am
Contains lots of keywords.
Android Wear
10:06am
Over 1500 watchfaces! Yay!
Key platform investments. Most recent release (already announced) includes:
- ALways-on Apps
- Wifi
- New Launcher
- Emoji recognizer
- Wrist gestures
- Maps API
- Screen Lock
Key principles:
- Glanceable
- Actionable
- Effortless
Always-on apps
Shopping list example, which is great, since I’ve hit this use case. Previous version kept the screen at full on brightness if you wanted your list up. Claim that it’s battery friendly, we’ll see.
Wrist gestures
Scroll through lists or Now Cards when hands are full, using gestures.
Emoji
Draw an emoji, get a list to pick from.
Uber
Uber is coming! “Call a car”, now can call an Uber, and watch the car coming with the always-on screen.
Fit
Can recognize squats, pushups and situps.
Spotify
Browse music on the watch.
Apps
4,000 specifically targeting Android Wear.
IoT/Brillo
10:15am
Sundar’s back on stage. Talking IoT/Home.
Want to connect everything.
Home
Smart blinds. Smart potted plant.
Agriculture
Smart Grass. Smart dirt.
Transportation
Smart bus drivers.
Problems
OEMs not sure how to build coherent platforms.
Nest
Division that’s going to solve this problem is Nest.
- User Experience
- Communications
- Operating System
Brillo
10:17am
Operating system for IoT. I’m sure I’ll be saying that word a lot over the summer.
- Derived from Android
- Minimal system requirements
- Broad silicon support
- Easy to secure
Q3 Developer Preview
Weave
10:19am
- Developer APIs
- Cross Platform
Messaging layer for communicating between smart devices. Looks like JSON, though I’m sure it’s going to be a low-level binary format. Standardized schemas, custom schemas will be able to be submitted for approval.
Q4 2015 Full Stack.
Mobile Search and Google Now
10:22am
- Natural Language Processing
- Image Recognition
- Translation
- Machine Learning
Deep Neural Nets
10:23am
Word error rate from 23% -> 8%.
Google Now
More contextual. Why can’t your smartphone be smarter? Where did I park my car?
- Context
- Answers (proactively)
- Action
Context
Different contexts means different information is useful. Being at Disney World vs sitting on your couch.
Understanding pronouns, through context awareness:
- “It”
- “There”
- “That”
- “They”
Answers
Knowledge graph. 1B entities in the knowledge graph.
Action
Get stuff done with apps. 100+ partners that surface actions from apps. Order an Uber. Play music. Re-order groceries.
Now on Tap
10:31am
Where you are, when you need it. Coming in Android M.
Long press the Home button, Google Now surfaces contextual information without leaving the app you’re looking at.
Viber getting demoed. Shows Google Now picking out two relevant pieces of information and providing actions based on those bits of info. NLP very good to pick out the dry cleaning reminder.
Google Now was able to correct mis-pronounciations based on what’s on the screen. This has been an issue, but the context helps the system correct the issue.
We need to provide actions for Now hooks to take advantage of.
Photos
10:38am
Machine learning. Trying to solve the issue of scrolling and scrolling to find what you’re looking for.
Google Photos
Launched for the 5th time? Looks like the old Photos.
Home
Home for all your photos and videos. To help organize and bring moments to life. Make it easy to share and save what matters.
Home for your photos. Auto-backup. Synced to Drive (instead of G+). Pinch across months/years. Looks a bit like iOS’s iPhoto (or whatever) feature. Swipe for collections. Seems very gesture heavy.
Organize
View people places and things. Sorted for you, privately. They’re Tweeting. G+ not very high up on the list.
For people, they’re able to look from the time his 5 year old was a baby, and they’re all categorized correctly. That’s impressive.
Search is also very impressive.
Actions
Editing, but also being able to easily put together stories, etc.
Photos Assistant. Auto-awesome v2. GoPro footage looks terrible.
Gesture for pressing and dragging to select similar to how desktops do it. “Get a link”, lets you create an album for anyone to consume without logging in. Allows you to add album to your library as the recipient.
Unlimited Free Storage
High quality up to 16MP photos, 1080p video.
Launching today! Android, iOS, and Web.
Emerging Markets
10:51am
8 of 10 new phones shipped are Android. (1.2B+ expected to ship next year, 80% of that is 960M.)
Translate
Intended as a fundamental service to help people communicate. For the next billion people coming online, mobile first.
Android One
Available in 7 countries. Dual Sim, replaceable battery, built-in radio. Running latest version of Android.
Chromebook
Targeting emerging markets. Under $150 for low end devices, that provide a high quality experience.
Core apps
Fast, useful, relevant.
Access to “good” information can be transformative.
Connectivity challenges, data costs.
Search
Light search results page shown in countries that typically have slow connections. Optimized web pages: 4x faster, 80% fewer bytes, 80MB reduction in memory usage.
Network quality estimator
Adapts webpage quality to current connection. Offline in Chrome on Android. Able to save pages for later.
YouTube offline
Save videos for up to 48hours.
Maps
Mapmaker? Local results improvements.
Transit coming to new areas.
Offline maps! Search with auto-complete, reviews, hours, and basic information. Navigation offline. Coming later this year.
Check out “Konga” (Africa’s Alibaba).
Cross-Platform Development
11:08am
- Identity
- Location
- Cloud
- Analytics
- Engagement
- Monetization
Develop
Android Studio 1.2, with full support for C/C++. Available on Canary.
Polymer 1.0. Lots of common elements as stock pieces.
iOS CocoaPods as the default distribution channel for Google libraries.
Testing - Cloud Test Lab. Leverages acquisition of Appurify. Coming ot Google Developer Play Console. Upload apk (with tests?), get back report and video.
Firebase used by 190k apps.
Engage
App Indexing, integrate app content into Google Search results, and allows uers to install from search results. Free.
Cloud messaging (GCM), adding iOS, and Topic subscriptions.
Mobile web - OS level notifications from websites. Add bookmark to homescreen.
App install ads. Universal app campaigns. In Developer Console in a few months.
Measure Install Ads, now both for Android and iOS. Cross-network with lifetime value attribution. Open, transparent, reliable.
Google Play Developer Console - adding views to the funnel, so you can see views -> installs -> …
A/B test Google Play listings. Includes app icon.
New Developer Pages, coherant company view.
Earn
AdMob integrated Analytics.
AdMob mediation, allows ads from 40 other networks (including Tencent?!?) to run through AdMob ads.
Google Play
11:20am
- 50B installs in past 12 months
- 1B active users
Games
Lots of interest in games on Android.
Personalization
Personalized Store, 2x more likely to get app installs.
Search
Group results by category. E.g. shopping -> fashion, coupons, …
Families
Family discovery experience, the Family Star. Content ratings.
Family section of store. Browse content by age. Browse by popular characters.
Ad supported or in-app-purchases are labeled.
Udacity
11:25am
Android Nanodegree. 6 month course, $200/mo.
Cardboard
11:26am
Ecosystem of manufacturers, hundreds of apps. 1 million cardboard viewers.
What’s next
Cardboard and VR.
New viewer. Fits more phones, up to 6 inches. Physical cardboard button, fewer steps. Free cardboard!
Cardboard SDK
Supports Android and iOS
VR in the classroom
11:31am
Expeditions.
Synchronized from teacher to students. Allow classrooms to take a field trip in minutes.
Jump
Capturing 360 VR Video.
- Camera Geometry
- Assembler
- Player
GoPro will build and sell Jump ready rig.
Stitching is impressive, trying to create true VR video, that understands objects, and allows more movement within video. When you move, it demonstrates the depth.
YouTube will support Jump this summer using Cardboard. YouTube currently supports non-stereoscopic 360 content.
Moonshots
11:42am
Moonshots are at the heart of Google.
Driverless cars
3200 deaths due to auto accidents. Self-driving cars have not caused a single accident thus far in the thousands of hours of trials.
Loon
Wants to bring the next billion users online. 100+ days in the air (beating NASA’s old record of 50 days), LTE (10mbps) speeds, 500m accuracy, 4x coverage area. Local partners.